Of Mice And Men Curley's Wife Character Analysis Essay

Injustice The worst physical wounds are temporary, and will heal given time. However, deep emotional or mental wounds last for a whole life. In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the two most wounded people are Curley’s wife and Crooks. Everyone avoids Curley’s wife because of her dominating husband, and she eventually gets brutally murdered when Lennie breaks her neck. Judging between her and Crooks, however, Crooks is more wounded; he is physically disabled, emotionally abused, alienated from other people, and doomed to a lifetime of suffering because of his ethnicity. A close look at Curley’s wife shows that she is significantly more wounded than the other main characters. Curley’s wife is described as a highly flirtatious woman with “...

He is first mentioned by Candy, the old swamper of the ranch, as a generous man when Crooks brings a gallon of whisky to everyone on Christmas. But readers will notice that the other characters are discriminatory towards Crooks since he is African-American. He is not allowed to even be in the bunkhouse, so he sleeps in the barn and reads books alone. Many characters push him over as well; Curley’s wife boasts, “‘I can get you strung up so easily that it ain’t funny’”(81). Crooks also has almost no one to talk to, as he explains how it feels when he talks to Lennie in his room: “‘You got George. You know he’s goin’ to come back. S’pose you didn’t have nobody. S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunkhouse and play rummy ‘cause you was black… A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody… I tell ya a guy gets too lonely and gets sick’” (72-73). Because Crooks has been isolated in the barn for all of his time working at the ranch, he becomes reclusive and bitter, unlike the other men in the bunkhouse. George then walks into Crooks’s room and leaves with Lennie after wishing Crooks a good night. Crooks is never mentioned in the story